We live through books; we have adventures in them, we lead alternative lives through them. We expand our memories through them. And that sometimes art can offer us more intense experiences of the world than life itself can.

For me, writing historical fiction is all about finding a balance between reading, traveling, looking, imagining, and dreaming.

Only Numbers. Pure math. You have to accustom yourself to thinking that way.

I never played inside as a kid - even in the rain I'd go out.

Travel definitely affects me as a writer.

A real diamond is never perfect.

My preference is for prose with more silence in it, language that contains more pockets of strangeness.